TOPIC: Sanitary Issue

Last night I had a adult patron come up to me and suggest that I make my people working the concession stand wear hair nets and plastic gloves when serving food not boxed such as popcorn, hot dogs, and nachos. I told her it was a good point and I would consider it. How do you handle this issue? I havn't seen any other theatre inforcing this kind of rule. Do any of you?

Every time I see the hairnets and plastic gloves I think of things being unsanitary.

I think in a theatre situation that those items would reinforce a negative stereotype. As long as people wash their hands, I don't mind that they handle my food. I made it 40 years 30 of which nobody wore plastic gloves. I have never had food poisoning.

We follow safe food handling practices here. We don't spit in your soda. We don't reach in to the bins and play with your popcorn. We don't touch your Bagel Dog. We wash our hands regularly enough to require hand lotion to be part of the kit. We have hand sanitizer for when you go from box to concessions.

But hell, who am I to talk, I still practice the 10-second rule at home. If it falls on the floor and is there less than 10 seconds... It's still good.

My stepmother, however, has a fear of germs. She cooks for her own family with plastic gloves. There is no sponge in the kitchen because that is a perfect media to grow bacteria. She covers her tile floor with cardboard because she is worried about what may be growing in the grout. But to be fair, I have never gotten sick over what she cooks either. And she doesn't ask for the health reports for the restaurants we go to either.

Some of the best food in the world is cooked street-side in third world countries and they donâ€™t have a three compartment sink and rubber gloves. I love street food. Charcoal kills everything and 10,000,000 flies canâ€™t be wrong.

The only thing we used gloves for was hotdogs. when we handled the bun etc.

Nothing else required gloves and such. As long as people used the ice scoops and the popcorn scoops and did not follow the 10 second rule things were ok.

I have had to throw out a whole popper's worth of corn because someone wasn't thinking and poured someone's corn back in after the patron had been eating it.

I have picked unused bags that fell on the concession floor and put them aside until they could be cycled back into the new pile.(after the people in line who saw them fall left) (they weren't dirty just hit the floor)

One of the local Rochester country clubs has had two salmonella outbreaks, now suspected of being sabotage:http://www.democratandchronicle.com/news/0809story021838_news.shtml
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services
Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Eastman Kodak Company
Rochester, NY 14650-1922
Telephone: 585-477-5325 Cell: 585-781-4036 Fax: 585-722-7243
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[This message has been edited by John Pytlak (edited August 11, 2002).]